Plaid Cymru's leadership battle has again thrown the issue of Welshness into the headlines. But its charge that Labour fears Welsh identity is wrong, writes Merthyr AM Huw Lewis, who says his party is woven into the social fabric of Wales

ONE has to feel a twinge of sympathy for Plaid Cymru's leadership hopefuls. Surely no other party makes its candidates dance to a tune so different to that listened to by the voters.

The complete domination of Plaid Cymru by their reactionary cultural nationalist faction of the north and west heartlands virtually ensures that anyone who is serious about winning has to crank up the nationalist rhetoric or face heavy defeat.

Past form has been to give the members nationalist red meat to chew on during the leadership election, and then bury the bones in good time to face the voters.

Ieuan Wyn Jones described himself as a "Welsh Nationalist" en route to his leadership win in 2000, but offered nothing bolder in 2003 than a second commission to look at the Assembly's powers - as if that could ever be a mandate for a nationalist agenda.

This time there has been much talk of nation-building and the national project. Helen Mary Jones aspires to a "non-dependent" Wales. Cynog Dafis has gone one better, with an acceptance of the term independence as a valid description of his party's goal.

For this Cynog Dafis deserves credit. Labour has long called upon Plaid Cymru to be honest about their ambition for Wales, so that we can have a debate based on the facts.

There is a real and fundamental difference between Labour and Plaid Cymru's visions for Wales, and people should be debating it instead of being tied in knots by Nationalist sophistry.

Cynog Dafis is quite wrong when he alleges Labour is scared of Welsh identity (a complicated concept which Cynog feels free to pronounce upon as a self-appointed ''identity guru'').

The Labour movement is woven into the social fabric of all parts of Wales and all parts of Welshness in a way the rarefied scholars and crachach who have driven the Plaid Cymru project can only read about.

Because we live real Welshness we are not hung up about it. Labour's hang-ups are the need to create jobs, fight poverty, deliver excellent public services, build strong communities - in short, social justice.

Identity and Welshness, by contrast, are the very objects of Plaid Cymru's hang-ups.

If Plaid Cymru could measure their idea of Welshness they would demand government league tables for it. No doubt I would be near the bottom of the league and Cynog near the top.

This is not healthy. More importantly, it is not the answer. This is because Welsh Labour sees the fundamental division in society in terms of haves and have-nots when it comes to power, wealth and opportunity.

These are the things that dictate life chances. Plaid Cymru defines the fundamental division in society on the basis of cultural and national identity, and that's a dead end. Patriotism, the "virtue of the vicious" as Wilde called it, butters no parsnips.

As shocking as it might seem to the nation builders, a lot of people do not lie awake at night worrying about the flag - they just get on with their lives. Plaid Cymru have just been too busy fixating about their identity or allegiance to notice.

Power, government and the organisation of the state are only means to ends. It is not weakness but a strength that Labour does not have a constitutional "endgame" in mind.

Indeed our interest in the organisation of government has focused on its capacity to deliver on policy objectives such as good public services, a strong economy and safe communities.

Cynog Dafis's attempt to portray Labour as some kind of adherent of the old order was always destined to fall flat, not least because it is made against the most constitutionally reforming government for 150 years.

The irony is that there is a sizeable chunk of Plaid Cymru who would run a mile if their wish came true. The Nationalists' appeal is based on demanding more of everything from the wicked English.

The Militant Tendency used to call this tactic a transitional demand; you think of a number, double it, call for it and when you do not get it you scream "betrayal". There is no future for Plaid Cymru in a Wales with no English bogeyman, so the irony is that Plaid Cymru need the status quo to keep afloat. Then again, they could just start blaming Brussels.

The politics of blame, rather than the politics of solutions, are Plaid Cymru's stock in trade. Dafydd Iwan's claim that many English people move to the Welsh speaking heartlands to escape "Pakistanis and all these Indians" is a good example. Far from being quoted out of context, Iwan's comments should be seen in the context of a pretty determined effort to denigrate English people moving into rural Welsh-speaking Wales from outside.

This is not the ideology of a national movement that wants Wales to succeed. It is the ideology of a party that can only prosper when it has an enemy to vilify and a victim culture to peddle.

Deputy Social Justice Minister Huw Lewis is the Labour AM for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney